No brewing this weekend, but I plan on playing around with a year and a half old Flanders red, blending and adjusting sourness, etc. The Berliner Weisse that I brewed last weekend had turned my basement into a sulphur pit, but it seems to be subsiding.

Still working on small beers for the summer, so I'm thinking I'll tweak the NEB Big Brew recipe to OG < 1.040 and hopefully FG ~ 1.016. I'll also sub debittered black malt for the roasted barley. Maybe some toasted, flaked oats for body?

We're doing a double batch day, one ale and one lager. Bucksnort Brown Ale (thanks again AHA for the honor ) and then a Bohemian Pilsener. Hoping a few friends stop by to hang out and celebrate Big Brew Day with us.

The Ann Arbor Brewers Guild will have 14 different brewing systems going on Saturday. We will be meeting at Adventures In Homebrewing's Ann Arbor, MI. location.

Personally, I am brewing 12 gallons of a Belgian Triple, and then rinsing out 5-6 gallons of a Belgian Single with the second running's. With 35 pounds of grains and 4 pounds of candy sugar (and a 5th for the Single), I should get around a 1.100 starting gravity for the big beer, and then about 1.036 - 1.040 for the second. I have been building starters of 3787 and 1214 since Sunday, and I will likely crash cool them tonight, take them out tomorrow, and feed them one more time Saturday morning to ensure a ripping healthy starter.

National Homebrew Day / Big Brew is a chance to get the homebrewing tribes out in force and celebrate and demonstrate our passion to the public. Not only is it a terrific communal event, but it also allows fellow homebrewers to learn from one another and challenge each other to better understand why we brew the way we do.

Enjoy the day and be safe. I love to say that with a hobby that combines compressed gas, boiling fluids, electricity, alcohol, open flame, hey, what could go wrong? Don't perform any Stupid Brewers Tricks, relax, don't worry, and easy on the homebrew until you start chilling the wort :-)

Brewing my annual 12+% wee heavy on Friday. Should be ready to sample sometime around Christmas.

And done! Long brew day. Started around 6:30 this morning. Ended up being almost 2.5 hours on the mash, another 2.5 hours on the boil. But it's chilled and pitched on top the yeast cake from the 70/- that I brewed last weekend as a starter. Just poured one of the 2011 batch and time to relax a little before finishing cleanup.